8/12/17

The Stumble to War

"Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum

I
Smell the Blood of a War to Come

Legions
Alive Will Soon be Dead

I'll
Grind Their Bones to Make My Bread"

- Mother
Goose (Song of the Armament Maker, 1936)

Theodore
Roscoe wrote short stories and serials for the pulp magazines and
periodicals of his day, such as Argosy, Wings and Far
East Adventure Stories, who also signed his name to a brace of
highly regarded, but rare, detective novels in the locked room
sub-genre – both of them have garnered praise from the likes of
Robert Adey and John
Norris.

Several
years ago, I favorably reviewed the most well-known of the two
titles, Murder
on the Way (1935), which is best described as Agatha
Christie's And There Were None (1939) as perceived by Hake
Talbot. The plot threw a grotesque cast of gargoyles into a
decaying chateau on Haiti, a place rife with superstition and voodoo
practices, where a fatal shooting occurred inside a locked room and a
man vanishing, impossibly, from an underground passage. Murder on
the Way is a marvelous flight of fancy and a first-grade pulp
detective that secured a permanent spot on my list of all-time
favorite (locked room) mysteries. And this made it all the more
depressing that Roscoe's second impossible crime novel proved to be
even more elusive. That is, until recently.

Back
in March, "JJ," who blogs over at The Invisible Event, announced
he had been collaborating behind the scenes with Bold
Venture Press and Audrey Parente, author of Pulpmaster: The
Theodore Roscoe Story (1992), in order to bring Roscoe's
impossible crime novels back in print – having prepared the text
for publication and written an introduction for both editions. So
nothing but praise for everyone who worked on getting these once
rare, long-neglected titles back on our shelves!

I
really can't recommend Murder on the Way enough, but what
about that second, elusive locked room novel? Well, let say this, the
book is practically incomparable to anything else that has been
written in the detective genre. But let's start at the beginning.

I'll
Grind Their Bones (1936) was originally published in Argosy
as a seven-part serial, titled War Declared, which is set in
an alternative universe where names, borders and historical events
(slightly) differed from our time-line. The end result is best
described as speculative war-fiction that uses a pulp-style
detective-and thriller story as a vehicle and even flirted with the
Ruritanian Romance towards the end. What impressed me the most is
that the book, in some ways, can be read as a nightmarish premonition
of the war to come, because some of Roscoe's depiction of the next
war proved to be eerily close to what happened when the world
stumbled into another global conflict at the end of the decade –
making the book only comparable to Darwin
L. Teilhet's The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934). One of
the first works of fiction that addressed the political, and social,
upheaval in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

As
prophetic as the book is in some regards, Roscoe also drew heavily on
the Great War of 1914-18 for the aesthetics of the story and the
political powder keg at the heart of the plot. One of these nods to
the First World War can be found in the opening chapter.

The
lead character of I'll Grind Their Bones is a "correspondent-at-large" for the Universe News Agency,
John Keats, who visits a dark, gloomy castle in Transylvania,
Rumania, which is the home of a reclusive munitions magnate, Count
Vasil Garganoff – who's a poorly disguised version of the real-life
merchant of death, Sir Basil Zarahoff. A man who, like his fictional
portrayal, was known as "the so-styled Mystery Man of Europe."
Some have even called him the living, flesh-and-blood embodiment of
Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty. A salient detail
of history that was surprisingly overlooked by a certain someone
when writing the introduction.

Keats
was on his way to report on the conference taking place between the
Iron Premier of Teutony (Germany) and the Foreign Minister of
Esperance (France), but Count Garganoff granted a rare interview to
the American reporter.

Only
news Count Garganoff has to tell Keats' readers is that he turned
down the invitation to attend the closed door conference and asks to
put in print that he would appreciate it if these "blundering
statesmen" would omit him from their "proceedings
in the future," but the munitions magnate also has a lucrative,
off-the-record offer for the reporter – one that would allow him to
walk out of their meeting with a hundred grand in cash. Count
Garganoff wants Keats to cease his "literary attacks" on
the Hertha Gun Works and accept the money to take "a two-year
leave of absence" from his "strenuous literary
activities." Keats is even promised to be the next recipient of
the "the Godell Peace Prize," but turns down both and
that's when the problems begin to pile up all around him.

A
stray bullet penetrates the rear window of his car, as he and his
cameraman, Crazy Hooper drove away from the castle, while, at the
Hotel Metropole in the Teutonic capitol, someone threw a Russian
knife at him. Someone was obviously out to get him, but then
everything around him began to accelerate when shots were fired
inside the sealed conference room at the hotel.

Apparently,
Baron Sigismund von Speer (Iron Premier) and Victor Gatreau (Foreign
Minister) had "shot each other to death" during a heated
debate inside a locked, guarded and soundproof conference room at the
hotel.

Gatreau
was a well-known duelist in his country and had emptied his pistol on
the Teutonic premier, who only needed two bullets from his Luger,
which proved to be convenient excuse to start beating the drums of
war. This is another aspect borrowed from the First World War when
the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countless Sophie
acted as a prelude to, what is arguably, the stupidest thing we've
ever done on the European continent.

Meanwhile,
in the middle of people yelling "Heil Schnitzler" and "Gott strafe Esperance," Keats acts as a true
pulp-protagonist by stumbling from one complicated situation into
another: a young cub-reporter from the London Observer, Philip
Shepler, was murdered in his hotel room and the hotel is subsequently
torched to the ground. A beautiful press representative of the Soviet
Tass, named Alexandra Frantsovna, tells Keats she witnessed
the double shooting through the windows and swears shots had been
fired by a third person she was unable to observe. But that would
make the shooting a double murder of the impossible variety!

All
of this, and more, is what Keats finds on his path when he travels
from the Teutonic capital to the European headquarters of Universe
News in Esperance, but then a war exploded "in the heart of
the puzzle" and blew "the fragments a thousand ways."
And, as a consequence, the detective-and thriller elements of the
book (briefly) take a backseat to the war, which consist of several
well-written, fascinating and even prophetic chapters.

Der
Meister of Teutony, August Schnitzler, had declared there was a "danger-of-war" followed by an apocalyptic attack on
Esperance's capital city from the air with "aerial torpedoes"
(rockets) and marked the "first time in history they've been
used to reduce a city" - providing the book with prophetic
image of the German V-1 and V-2 rockets that would rain down in
London in World War II. Roscoe was reportedly a naval historian, who
had been commissioned by the US Naval Institute to write several
books about Navy operations, which likely gave him some insight in
the military capabilities of future wars.

Keats
stumbling through the smoking, corpse-littered rubble of the city
makes for a haunting and powerful scene. One that sadly would become
a stark reality only a few short years later.

A
second prophetic, but very brief, scene is when the Teutonic army
occupies the fictitious Kingdom of Helvania and mentions squadrons of
parachutes that made it look as if "the sky was raining men."
Paratroopers were first used, on a massive scale, during the World
War II. There were, however, other things that were less prophetic or
grounded in reality. One of them was the ridiculous easy invasion of
Switzerland and the other was the premature end of the three-way war
between Teutony, Espererance and Helvania, which bordered on the
ludicrous and hopelessly naive to boot. You would not have beaten the
real Nazis as easily as that.

So
the rapid deterioration of the political ties between two countries
and the subsequent war makes for fascinating reading, especially when
you realize it was written several years before the actual war took
place, but what about that double murder in Hotel Metropole, you ask
– which appeared to have all the earmarks of an impossible crime.
Well, the explanation as to who engineered the murders, and how, was
both foreshadowed and sometimes bluntly clued. But the hints and
clues were all there.

What
might prove be a problem for some readers is that the who and how,
completely depended upon one another here, strongly reminds one of
the pulpier miracle crimes imagined by the likes of Fredric
Brown and Clayton
Rawson. I found this to be slightly disappointing, because I had
hoped that the plot, or detective-elements, would emerge from the
turmoil of the war story-line as something along the lines of the
bloody tour-de-force that was Murder on the Way. I wanted this
book to be an all-round masterpiece, but lacked that spark of
innovation in the solution to launch the book to the godly heights of
the Mount Olympus of Detective-Fiction.

Nevertheless,
I don't want to sell I'll Grind Their Bones short and end this
blog-post on sour note, because, as a whole, this really is an
excellent, but pulpy, detective novel with a prophetic eye on the
then coming war. Only problem is that its predecessor cast a shadow
of expectation over the plot. So maybe I only have myself to blame
for that slight twinge of disappointment, because both books are
incomparable.

In
closing, Murder on the Way remains my favorite of Roscoe's two
locked room novels, but I'll Grind Their Bones has conquered a
spot on my list of favorite war-time mysteries, which includes
Christianna Brand's Green
for Danger (1944), Carter Dickson's Nine-and
Death Makes Ten (1940), Michael Gilbert's The
Danger Within (1952) and Franklyn Pell's Hangman's
Hill (1946; better setting than plot).

So,
that's another review I botched in the end. Anway, I'll probably have
a lesser-known, but equally, obscure locked room mystery for the next
blog-post.

8 comments:

You're welcome, Jonathan. They're both great reads for different reasons, but, purely seen as a detective story, Murder on the Way has an edge over I'll Grind Their Bones. That being said, I hope you'll enjoy both as much as I have.

Taken purely as an impossible crime novel I can see this being a disappointment for some - there's so much richness in the war setting, and the way that aspect of the plot plays out is so crazily on the money that I just sort of stood in awe at what Roscoe achieves there. I do think it's a better book than MotW overall, but I can totally see your point about the impossibilities and the hope that there'd be something less...pulp-y about their resolution. I loved the unfolding of it all, but then I'm not really in the best position to judge overall...!

And I can see your point why you'd pick I'll Grind Their Bones over Murder on the Way.

The political turmoil and subsequent burst of violence were amazingly well done, as was the overall tone and pace of the story, but Roscoe's previous locked room makes you expect something more conventional from the solution. Instead, Roscoe went full pulp.

So, purely judged by the detective elements, I think Murder on the Way is better, but that should not take anything away from I'll Grind Their Bones. My review, hopefully, gives you an idea how fascinated I was by Roscoe's vision of the then coming war.

Hey TomCat, sorry for the irrelevant post... But in your review of Roger Ormerod's novel you mentioned that Robert Adey listed three of Ormerod's novels as impossible mysteries. Could I ask which three were listed? I think you only named one in your original review...

I've to look up what the exact impossible situation is in A Spoonful of Luger, but, from what I remember, the description said that the murder weapon was securely under lock and key at the time of the shooting. So the impossibility might just be a minor part in that book.

The Usual Suspect

An Elementary Observation

Welcome to the niche corner, dedicated to the great detective stories of yore and their neo-classical descendants.

Witnesses' Statements

"It's my job to fan the fires of your imagination with tales of doom and gloom; right now I have another chilling tale for you. A tale of danger and mystery..."- Vincent Price (Grandmaster of the Macabre)."The detectives who explain miracles, even more than their colleagues who clarify more secular matters, play the Promethean role of asserting man's intellect and inventiveness even against the Gods."- Anthony Boucher.

"I like my murders to be frequent, gory, and grotesque. I like some vividness of colour and imagination flashing out of my plot, since I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened. I do not care to hear the hum of everyday life; I much prefer to hear the chuckle of the great Hanaud or the deadly bells of Fenchurch St Paul."- Dr. Gideon Fell (telling it like it is since 1933).